Fun Facts About Your County

[Ben114]

Worcester County, Massachusetts:

- Contains 4 out of MA's 7 3dis (most in the state)
- Contains MA's newest freeway segment (MA 146: 2007)

[bassoon1986]

Rapides Parish Louisiana

-The name is a bit of a misnomer. It was named for rapids along this area of the Red River. The plural in French would have been "rapide"  with an "e"  and no "s"  but it kind of got a mixture of French and English so Rapides was the name that stuck. It's pronounced RAP-peeds

-second largest parish in Louisiana by land area.


iPhone

[gonealookin]

Douglas County, Nevada:

Roads:

1.  Most populous county in Nevada without an Interstate.
2.  Nevada has only two 2-digit state routes, and this county has both of them:  NV 28 and NV 88.

Facts:

1.  When it happened on March 1, 1964, a plane crash on the ridge above my house had the second-highest death toll of any crash in US history involving a single airplane (a couple of midair collisions had taken more lives).



One can hike or mountain bike to a small informal memorial on the site, maintained by the victims' families.  It's striking how, standing there, if the plane were just a couple hundred feet higher or a couple hundred yards to the south, they would have made it safely out to Carson Valley.

2.  Probably the most exciting event was the bomb explosion at Harvey's in 1980.  Some news video here with the money shot at about 1:14.



In spite of the appearance, the damage to the building was mostly cosmetic.  That building still stands.

3.  Biggest annual event is the American Century Championship celebrity golf tournament, which will be held this year for television the weekend after July 4, without spectators.  There have been a few misadventures off the course related to that, including infamously tournament participant Donald Trump's alleged dalliance with Stormy Daniels in 2006.

[Roadgeekteen]

Worcester County, Massachusetts:

- Contains 4 out of MA's 7 3dis (most in the state)
- Contains MA's newest freeway segment (MA 146: 2007)

Funny how Worcester has more 3dis than Boston.

[SP Cook]

Putnam County, WV:

Roads: 

Nothing really remarkable. 

Other:

- Named for Revolutionary War figure Israel Putnam, who was from CT, one of 12 counties in WV named for political/military figures who were not related to pre-war Virginia.

- Has four communities named for people using their first names.  Winfield, the county seat, named for Winfield Scott (Mexican War); Elenore, originally a "new deal" cash free "new town", named for Elenore Roosevelt; Black Betsy, originally an all black town named for a early settler whose last name is lost to history, for those excluded from Elenore; and Pliny, named for early settler Pliny Brown.

- Largest town is Hurricane, pronounced hur-UH-cun, not Hur-i-KANE like the storm.  Original surveyors, from coastal Virginia, found the remnants of a tornado, and being from the coast, thought it was from a hurricane. 

- Contains one of three WV towns that are in two counties.  Nitro, named for nitrocellouse, a gun powder ingredient made there during WWI.

- As the state lost population, had double digit %age growth in every census from 1960 to 2000. 

- Contains a post office for a place that no longer exists.  Teays, WV 25569.  The place was just a few houses, destroyed for I-64, but the PO is still in existence, in a strip mall.  But the mall has a Hurricane address, as Teays is only PO boxes, no geographic territory.

- Teays Valley, the generic joint name for the bedroom suburbs of Charleston, is named for the pre-historic ice age river, which has not existed for thousands of years.   And it is pronounces "tays" not "tees", despite the common rule you learned in grade school about two vowels together in a word.

- One of the four HSs, Poca is the Poca Dots, and does a fair business in logo wear online.

- Second in the state (after DC bedroom community, Jefferson) in per capita income, and joins with it as the only two WV counties whose per capita income is higher than the national one. 

- Fraziers Bottom is the site of a fictional Piggly Wiggly supermarket in the 2004 movie "Win A Date With Tad Hamilton"  At the time WV did not have any Piggly Wiggly locations and Fraziers Bottom, portraited as a small town but which is actually little more than a collection of houses with no commercial district, still does not.

[CtrlAltDel]

- Has four communities named for people using their first names.  Winfield, the county seat, named for Winfield Scott (Mexican War); Elenore, originally a "new deal" cash free "new town", named for Elenore Roosevelt; Black Betsy, originally an all black town named for a early settler whose last name is lost to history, for those excluded from Elenore; and Pliny, named for early settler Pliny Brown.

(Incidentally, the spelling is Eleanor, at least according to the wiki, for the town as well as the first lady.)

Speaking of things named after first names, Illinois has two counties named after DeWitt Clinton: Clinton County and also DeWitt County. I'm not sure how that came about, though.

[kevinb1994]

- Has four communities named for people using their first names.  Winfield, the county seat, named for Winfield Scott (Mexican War); Elenore, originally a "new deal" cash free "new town", named for Elenore Roosevelt; Black Betsy, originally an all black town named for a early settler whose last name is lost to history, for those excluded from Elenore; and Pliny, named for early settler Pliny Brown.

(Incidentally, the spelling is Eleanor, at least according to the wiki, for the town as well as the first lady.)

Speaking of things named after first names, Illinois has two counties named after DeWitt Clinton: Clinton County and also DeWitt County. I'm not sure how that came about, though.

DeWitt Clinton was famous for being the political force behind the Erie Canal. Basically a product of Manifest Destiny, if you were to call it that.

[Flint1979]

- Has four communities named for people using their first names.  Winfield, the county seat, named for Winfield Scott (Mexican War); Elenore, originally a "new deal" cash free "new town", named for Elenore Roosevelt; Black Betsy, originally an all black town named for a early settler whose last name is lost to history, for those excluded from Elenore; and Pliny, named for early settler Pliny Brown.

(Incidentally, the spelling is Eleanor, at least according to the wiki, for the town as well as the first lady.)

Speaking of things named after first names, Illinois has two counties named after DeWitt Clinton: Clinton County and also DeWitt County. I'm not sure how that came about, though.

Michigan has a Clinton County with a city named DeWitt in it.

[ftballfan]

Manistee County, MI:

- Smallest county in the Lower Peninsula by population with a Meijer

FIFY.  There's a Meijer in Sault Ste Marie.

Chippewa County has a significantly higher population than Manistee County. There are also Meijers in Mason County, Alpena County, Otsego County, and Wexford County, all of whom are between Manistee and Chippewa counties in population (Otsego County passed Manistee County within the past couple of years)

[GaryV]

Manistee County, MI:

- Smallest county in the Lower Peninsula by population with a Meijer

FIFY.  There's a Meijer in Sault Ste Marie.

Chippewa County has a significantly higher population than Manistee County. There are also Meijers in Mason County, Alpena County, Otsego County, and Wexford County, all of whom are between Manistee and Chippewa counties in population (Otsego County passed Manistee County within the past couple of years)

You are correct.  I think I was looking at the population of Mackinac instead of Chippewa county.

[Hwy 61 Revisited]

At one point Monroe County led the state in COVID-19 cases per capita!

[STLmapboy]

St. Louis County:
Most populous county in Missouri
Home to state's largest airport (Lambert Int'l)
Most interstates of any county in MO, with 7 of them (44, 55, 64, 70, 170, 255, 270)

[hbelkins]

Putnam County, WV:
- Largest town is Hurricane, pronounced hur-UH-cun, not Hur-i-KANE like the storm.  Original surveyors, from coastal Virginia, found the remnants of a tornado, and being from the coast, thought it was from a hurricane.

Wonder if the reasonably-close communities of Cyclone and Tornado were similarly named?

As for Pliny, it's best known as being the location of an adult bookstore that gets a lot of customers from truckers passing by on US 35.

[bassoon1986]

St. Louis County:
Most populous county in Missouri
Home to state's largest airport (Lambert Int'l)
Tied with Jackson County (home to KC) for most interstates in a county. In STL County there are 6 (44, 55, 64, 70, 170, 270)

I-255 as well!


iPhone

[STLmapboy]

St. Louis County:
Most populous county in Missouri
Home to state's largest airport (Lambert Int'l)
Tied with Jackson County (home to KC) for most interstates in a county. In STL County there are 6 (44, 55, 64, 70, 170, 270)

I-255 as well!


iPhone

Thanks for the reminder! I guess we do definitively have the most interstates (7) in a MO county!

[jmacswimmer]

Baltimore County MD:

-3rd most populous county in the state (after Montgomery & Prince George's counties, which both border DC)
-County seat is Towson, and not Baltimore (which is an independent city)
-Contains the national headquarters of the Social Security Administration near the I-70/I-695 interchange
-Contains the only Guinness brewery on this side of the pond, near BWI (it even got its own blue "Attractions" sign on I-195 leaving the airport)
-Has the most interstates of any Maryland county (7)
     -Tied with Washington County for most 2di's (3)
     -Tied with Anne Arundel County for most 3di's (4)
-Contains the first, and so far only, ETL's in the state, along a portion of I-95 northeast of Baltimore. (Montgomery & Prince George's, your move )
-4 different types of passenger rail run in the county - light rail, heavy rail, commuter rail, & intercity rail (again, your move Montgomery & Prince George's)

[sprjus4]

-Contains the first, and so far only, ETL's in the state, along a portion of I-95 northeast of Baltimore. (Montgomery & Prince George's, your move

Hopefully I-495 will be done right - HO/T lanes (HOV-3 free with E-ZPass Flex) instead of all tolled like along I-95 in Baltimore. I will say though, the toll rates are fairly reasonable on Baltimore's lanes compared to Northern Virginia.

[jeffandnicole]

-Contains the first, and so far only, ETL's in the state, along a portion of I-95 northeast of Baltimore. (Montgomery & Prince George's, your move

Hopefully I-495 will be done right - HO/T lanes (HOV-3 free with E-ZPass Flex) instead of all tolled like along I-95 in Baltimore. I will say though, the toll rates are fairly reasonable on Baltimore's lanes compared to Northern Virginia.

The toll rates are 'reasonable' because no one uses it (and you continue to have no understanding of how VA's ETLs are designed to work). I'll admit I really haven't been thru the area north of Baltimore during a regular rush hour, but the 22 or so hours outside of rush hour in each direction, the free lanes are fully adequate; even including the 3 lane portion thru 695.  Predicting the future is tough, and Maryland had really bad timing when it came to the economic downtown after 2008 and now the Covid, but Maryland failed miserably in this respect.  Even if the ETLs were built out as originally designed up to MD 24, the frequent delays seen currently due to a single lane reduction would've been expediently worse if more lanes narrowed down to 3 lanes.   

The NJ Turnpike got it right when they went from 6 lanes to 3 lanes.  Virginia got it right (on the 2nd try) when they merged in the Lexus lanes into the general lanes on 95.  Maryland, by comparison, was flinging darts after a night at the bar to see what they should do.

[STLmapboy]

Has what might possibly be the highest signed clearance in America, at 23 ft, 9 in:
https://www.google.com/maps/@29.124172,-95.4304301,3a,15y,4.51h,91.8t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sO0MCnHjnhTkVrKbYZ1tLEw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Sorry I'm late but--is that a county road shield in Texas?!

[briantroutman]

My native county (Lycoming County, Pennsylvania)

- Largest county in Pennsylvania by land area
- Only Pennsylvania county to contain a three-digit Interstate but no two-digit interstates

[Scott5114]

Has what might possibly be the highest signed clearance in America, at 23 ft, 9 in:
https://www.google.com/maps/@29.124172,-95.4304301,3a,15y,4.51h,91.8t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sO0MCnHjnhTkVrKbYZ1tLEw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Oklahoma has a policy of posting pretty much every bridge clearance, whether it makes sense or not, so I thought we might have had it beat at I-35/I-40/I-235, but it just barely misses out at 22'7".

[Buck87]

Huron County, Ohio:

- originally consisted of the entire Firelands or Sufferers' Lands, which was the far western section of the Connecticut Western Reserve meant to be set aside as restitution for Connecticut residents whose homes were burned by the British during the American Revolutionary War.
- as a result, some of its place names are named for places in CT: Norwalk (city and township), New London (village and township), Greenwich (village and township), New Haven (unincorporated place and township), Village of North Fairfield, Fairfield Township, and Ridgefield Township.
- parts of the original Huron County were broken off and became part of other countries in the early 1800's: Danbury Township became part of Ottawa County, Ruggles Township became part of Ashland County, and 9 townships (including one called Groton) were broken off to form Erie County.
- Erie County's formation lead to a couple quirks: The city of Huron in not in Huron County, and the county seat Norwalk is not near the geographic center of the county. 
- because it was part of the Connecticut Western Reserve, it has townships that are 5 mile squares, as opposed to the 6 mile square townships defined by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 that start to the west in neighboring Seneca and Sandusky Counties. 

 

[JoePCool14]

Crook County.

Yup, that's all I got.

[US71]

Crook County.

Yup, that's all I got.

Shedd Aquarium, Museum of Science & Indistry, 

[SSOWorld]

Crook County.

Yup, that's all I got.

Home of the city of "Shit"-cago